FS#7939 - Items keep randomly disappearing form containers in guild house after crashes
When I learned about the new transformation mode I took it upon myself to clean up our guildhouse.
In the process I removed many old items from the map and stored them in containers instead.
While I did this occasional crashes happened, which on returning seem to have deleted items stored in these containers.
I have lost roughly 70% of player generated/crafted items, some of historical value this way, as well as many player crafted weapons and armours of highest quality.
A very alarming issue.
If my asumption is correct the server automatically deletes any item that it suspects to be involved in crashes. While this maybe desired behaviour in terms of the technical side of things, in terms of a persistent game world this is REALLY, REALLY bad, if true.
On a second note there's something else I noticed with respect to this. Some container kept their contents while others lost theirs. In hindsight it might be the items that I placed into the container while holding the container itsself in my inventory. It might be that the ones that were placed into the container after that had been placed onto the map, that dissolved. That would also suit the "You should not leave something here" messages that kept popping up.
I have tried it again and can confirm, my last suspicion. Placing items inside containers, which have already been placed into the world, lets the items disappear after a while.
Placing them there, while the container is still in your inventory, lets the items stay in the container, also when placed in the world afterwards.
I cannot reproduce this bug. What container are you using? The only containers that may delete/destroy items, are the ones like a furnace or forge, surely not a closet.
These were two door closets and they are placed in the GH3 map/instance (guildlaw/15263749; on the far right mezzanine when coming in).
I investigated more on this problem. Whenever a container is on the ground, and player adds an item to it, the item will become guarded by him, so none else can touch it. But (mainly for guildhouses) we decided the item cannot be own for ever, so there is timer of 10 minutes that starts when you put the item in the container. After this timer expires the player gets the message: "You probably should not leave xxx here" and this also makes the item pickupable by other players. Items are never destroyed or deleted through this process. So if you lost items, must have been something else.
The fact that the message about unguarding occurs may be entirely unrelated. Assuming otherwise – stating that since unguarding happens and unguarding can't delete items – the problem doesn't exist is a logical fallacy.
Fact is, that I did lose items this way (this way being putting them in a container previously set up inside a guildhouse) and I did loose all of them – a large amount of at least two dozen items or stacks of items. when I put them there after the container had been dropped.
One circumstance that wasn't tested as far as I am aware: The problem might be related to unguarding with respect to the fact that the container itself is unguarded after a while and is unguarded before the items inside get unguarded, because they were put in after the container was dropped.
But again, the bug making things disappear might not have to do with unguarding at all!